”
“Yes, indeed, but I wouldn’t presume to dance with you.”
“Oh! but you must.”
Francis Wilmot’s head went round, and his body began going round too.
“You dance better than an Englishman, unless he’s professional,” said her lips six inches from his own.
“I’m proud to hear you say so, ma’am.”
“Don’t you know my name? or do you always call women ma’am? It’s ever so pretty.”
“Certainly I know your name and where you live. I wasn’t six yards from you this morning at four o’clock.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I just thought I’d like to be near you.”
Marjorie Ferrar said, as if to herself:
“The prettiest speech I ever heard. Come and have tea with me there tomorrow.”
Reversing, side-stepping, doing all he knew, Francis Wilmot said, slowly:
“I have to be in Paris.”
“Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.”
“I’m not afraid, but–”
“Well, I shall expect you.” And, transferring herself again to her mask-faced partner, she looked back at him over her shoulder.
Francis Wilmot wiped his brow. An astonishing experience, another blow to his preconception of a stiff and formal race! If he had not known she was the daughter of a lord, he would have thought her an American. Would she ask him to dance with her again? But she left the lounge without another glance.
An up-to-date young man, a typical young man, would have felt the more jaunty. But he was neither. Six months’ training for the Air Service in 1918, one visit to New York, and a few trips to Charleston and Savannah, had left him still a countryman, with a tradition of good manners, work, and simple living. Women, of whom he had known few, were to him worthy of considerable respect. He judged them by his sister, or by the friends of his dead mother, in Savannah, who were all of a certain age. A Northern lady on the boat had told him that Southern girls measured life by the number of men they could attract; she had given him an amusing take-off of a Southern girl. It had been a surprise to this young Southerner. Anne was not like that; she had never had the chance to be, anyway, having married at nineteen the first young man who had asked her!
By the morning’s post he received Fleur’s little letter. ‘Limit!’ Limit of what? He felt indignant. He did not go to Paris, and at four o’clock he was at Wren Street.
In her studio Marjorie Ferrar, clad in a flax-blue overall, was scraping at a picture with a little knife. An hour later he was her slave. Cruft’s Dog Show, the Beefeaters, the Derby–he could not even remember his desire to see them; he only desired to see one English thing–Marjorie Ferrar. He hardly remembered which way the river flowed, and by mere accident walked East instead of West. Her hair, her eyes, her voice–he ‘had fallen for her!’ He knew himself for a fool, and did not mind; farther man cannot go. She passed him in a little open car, driving it herself, on her way to a rehearsal. She waved her hand. Blood rushed to his heart and rushed away; he trembled and went pale. And, as the car vanished, he felt lost, as if in a world of shadows, grey and dreary! Ah! There was Parliament! And, near by, the one spot in London where he could go and talk of Marjorie Ferrar, and that was where she had misbehaved herself! He itched to defend her from the charge of being ‘the limit.’ He could perceive the inappropriateness of going back there to talk to Fleur of her enemy, but anything was better than not talking of her. So, turning into South Square, he rang the bell.
Fleur was in her ‘parlour,’ if not precisely eating bread and honey, at least having tea.
“Not in Paris? How nice! Tea?”
“I’ve had it,” said Francis Wilmot, colouring. “I had it with HER.”
Fleur stared.
“Oh!” she said, with a laugh. “How interesting! Where did she pick you up?”
Without taking in the implication of the words, Francis Wilmot was conscious of something deadly in them.
“She was at the ‘the dansant’ at my hotel yesterday. She’s a wonderful dancer. I think she’s a wonderful person altogether; I’d like to have you tell me what you mean by calling her ‘the limit’?”
“I’d like to have you tell me why this volte face since Wednesday night?”
Francis Wilmot smiled: “You people have been ever so kind to me, and I want you to be friends with her again. I’m sure she didn’t mean what she said that night.”
“Indeed! Did she tell you that?”
“Why–not exactly! She said she didn’t mean us to hear them.”
“No?”
He looked at her smiling face, conscious, perhaps, of deep waters, but youthfully, Americanly, unconscious of serious obstacle to his desire to smooth things out.
“I just hate to think you two are out after each other. Won’t you come and meet her at my hotel, and shake hands?”
Fleur’s eyes moved slowly over him from head to toe.
“You look as if you might have some French blood in you. Have you?”
“Yes. My grandmother was of French stock.”
“Well, I have more. The French, you know, don’t forgive easily. And they don’t persuade themselves into believing what they want to.”
Francis Wilmot rose, and spoke with a kind of masterfulness.
“You’re going to tell me what you meant in your letter.”
“Am I? My dear young man, the limit of perfection, of course. Aren’t you a living proof?”
Aware that he was being mocked, and mixed in his feelings, Francis Wilmot made for the door.
“Good-bye,” he said. “I suppose you’ll have no use for me in future.”
“Good-bye!” said Fleur.
He went out rueful, puzzled, lonelier even than when he went in. He was guideless, with no one to ‘put him wise’! No directness and simplicity in this town. People did not say what they meant; and his goddess–as enigmatic and twisting as the rest! More so–more so–for what did the rest matter?
Chapter XI.
SOAMES VISITS THE PRESS
Soames had gone off to his sister’s in Green Street thoroughly upset. That Fleur should have a declared enemy, powerful in Society, filled him with uneasiness; that she should hold him accountable for it, seemed the more unjust, because in fact he was.
An evening spent under the calming influence of Winifred Dartie’s common-sense, and Turkish coffee, which, though ‘liverish stuff,’ he always drank with relish, restored in him something of the feeling that it was a storm in a teacup.
“But that paper paragraph,” he said, “sticks in my gizzard.”
“Very tiresome, Soames, the whole thing; but I shouldn’t bother. People skim those ‘chiff-chaff’ little notes and forget them the next moment. They’re just put in for fun.”
“Pretty sort of fun! That paper says it has a million readers.”
“There’s no name mentioned.”
“These political people and whipper-snappers in Society all know each other,” said Soames.
“Yes, my dear boy,” said Winifred in her comfortable voice, so cosey, and above disturbance, “but nobody takes anything seriously nowadays.”
She was sensible. He went up to bed in more cheerful mood.
But retirement from affairs had effected in Soames a deeper change than he was at all aware of. Lacking professional issues to anchor the faculty for worrying he had inherited from James Forsyte, he was inclined to pet any trouble that came along. The more he thought of that paragraph, the more he felt inclined for a friendly talk with the editor. If he could go to Fleur and say: “I’ve made it all right with those fellows, anyway. There’ll be no more of that sort of thing,” he would wipe out her vexation. If you couldn’t make people in private think well of your daughter, you could surely check public expression of the opposite opinion.
Except that he did not like to get into them, Soames took on the whole a favourable view of ‘the papers.’ He read The Times; his father had read it before him, and he had been brought up on its crackle. It had news–more news for his money than he could get through. He respected its leading articles; and if its great supplements had at times appeared to him too much of a good thing, still it was a gentleman’s paper. Annette and Winifred took The Morning Post. That also was a gentleman’s paper, but it had bees in its bonnet. Bees in bonnets were respectable things, but personally Soames did not care for them. He knew little of the other papers except that those he saw about had bigger headlines and seemed cut up into little bits. Of the Press as a whole he took the English view: It was an institution. It had its virtues and its vices–anyway you had to put up with it.
About eleven o’clock he was walking towards Fleet Street.
At the office of The Evening Sun he handed in his card and asked to see the Editor. After a moment’s inspection of his top-hat, he was taken down a corridor and deposited in a small room. It seemed a ‘wandering great place.’ Some one would see him!
“Some one?” said Soames: “I want the Editor.”
The Editor was very busy; could he come again when the rush was over?
“No,” said Soames.
Would he state his business? Soames wouldn’t.
The attendant again looked at his top-hat and went away.
Soames waited a quarter of an hour, and was then taken to an even smaller room, where a cheery-looking man in eye-glasses was turning over a book of filed cuttings. He glanced up as Soames entered, took his card from the table, and read from it:
“Mr. Soames Forsyte? Yes?”
“Are you the Editor?” asked Soames.
“One of them. Take a seat. What can I do for you?”
Impressed by a certain speed in the air, and desirous of making a good impression, Soames did not sit down, but took from his pocket-book the paragraph.
“I’ve come about this in your issue of last Thursday.”
The cheery man put it up to his eyes, seemed to chew the sense of it a little with his mouth, and said: “Yes?”
“Would you kindly tell me who wrote it?”
“We never disclose the names of correspondents, sir.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I know.”
The cheery man’s mouth opened, as if to emit the words: “Then why did you ask?” but closed in a smile instead.
“You’ll forgive me,” said Soames; “it quite clearly refers to my daughter, Mrs. Michael Mont, and her husband.”
“Indeed! You have the advantage of me; but what’s the matter with it? Seems rather a harmless piece of gossip.”
Soames looked at him. He was too cheery;
“You think so?” he said, drily. “May I ask if you would like to have your daughter alluded to as an enterprising little lady?”
“Why not? It’s quite a pleasant word. Besides, there’s no name mentioned.”
“Do you put things in,” asked Soames, shrewdly, “in order that they may be Greek to all your readers?”
The cheery man laughed: “Well,” he said, “hardly. But really, sir, aren’t you rather thin-skinned?”
This was an aspect of the affair that Soames had not foreseen. Before he could ask this Editor chap not to repeat his offence, he had apparently to convince him that it WAS an offence; but to do that he must expose the real meaning of the paragraph.
“Well,” he said, “if you can’t see that the tone of the thing’s unpleasant, I can’t make you. But I beg you won’t let any more such paragraphs appear. I happen to know that your correspondent is actuated by malevolence.”
The cheery man again ran his eye over the cutting.
“I shouldn’t have judged that. People in politics are taking and giving knocks all the time–they’re not mealy-mouthed. This seems perfectly innocuous as gossip goes.”
Thus backhanded by the words ‘thin-skinned’ and ‘mealy-mouthed,’ Soames said testily:
“The whole thing’s extremely petty.”
“Well, sir, you know, I rather agree.
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